Wake Up & Smell the SEO Scum

You own a site and are just wild about getting it to convert leads and sales right? Welcome to the club. The problem with the SEO industry is it’s filled with liars, scoundrels and down right idiots.

Sorry if you’re one of them. However, since working in this industry since 2001 (full time beginning in ’07) I’ve seen so many business owners get screwed.

It’s almost as if you really have no idea who you can trust. Here’s a story that happened just this week.

A site owner in Russia contacted me. He’s in IT specializing in Magento development. It’s a great niche with endless business. But after doing his initial video assessment I noticed something odd.

He ranked well on Google RU. Only, for keywords with nearly no search counts. So this nice guy invested boatloads of capital in an “SEO guru” to rank for key phrases that no one even cares about. Ouch.

It’s actually one of the sneaky little tricks most firms pull on you. They send you a bunch of crap that makes no sense. Often their reports are created using automated filters and softwares so outdated it should be criminal.

So you look at the stuff scratching your head. How the hell should you know what it all means. Most business owners I speak with have zero understanding what they even want.

Sure they want to rank well. But that’s about it. So beware when you’re kicking tires thinking about hiring an SEO geek.

The problem always comes down to poor keyword research. Why would you want to rank for keys not being searched? Sounds kind of dumb to me.

About a year ago I had another client come on with me that had spent in excess of $5k with a firm that spam backlinked his site for over a year. Now he’s been penalized by Google Penguin. Listen up. If you have spam backlinks, you need to get them disavowed yesterday.

The process takes time. I go through each and every one. Then generate a report that gets uploaded into your Google Webmasters account. But even if your disavowal request is accepted, you still may never rank well again.

This kind of crapola goes on without you ever knowing about it.

So what do you do if you’re desperate to find an affordable SEO-er who’s honest? I recommend prayer, hope and knowledge in that order.

If you’re agnostic, skip the prayer. Hope will only get you so far. But knowledge is going to be your best friend.

Get references! Don’t accept lame screenshots of rankings for bad keywords either. The very first question you need to ask is what keywords have you ranked clients for and what are their monthly search counts?

If there’s only 20 people search for a key a month, move on in your search.

You want two sets of target keywords. The first are ones searched thousands of times (exact searches, not broad). The next are longtail keywords searched hundreds of times a month.

This formula sets you up well because the monster searched keys will take time to rank if your site content has enormous Google relevancy for your target audience and keywords. The lesser-searched phrases are usually quicker to rank provided you have original text and video content.

Honestly, it sickens me to see business owners get screwed. There’s never been a slippery bunch of people trading services for money these days than in the SEO world.

Don’t forget, everything takes time. So overnight sensation promises getting your ranked well in a month are a complete joke. Anyone telling you such are going to pick keys with little to no searches a month as your target phrases. Don’t get duped into thinking you’re doing well because you rank on the first page of Google.

It’s the search counts silly:-). If your keywords don’t have any then you’re flushing money down the toilet.